Sogdian is a Western branch member of the Indo-Iranian subgroup of the Indo-European language family formerly spoken in ancient Sogdiana along the upper Zeravshan river.
Sogdian's grammar preserved a number of features from ancient inflected Proto-Indo-European language including the specific trait of losing or preserving the ending depending on the length of stem vowels.
Three varieties of Sogdian script are related to Aramaic alphabets.